BubbleStream

Kelly Collins

The Dean's List

Synopsis

Sexy. Charming. Motivated. These are the requirements of The Dean's List; a university society that offers alumni anything they desire.
As a preacher’s daughter, River Roberts was told educating women was a waste. Driven to prove her parents wrong, she set out to liberate herself with a bachelor’s degree, only to find herself underqualified and underemployed.
Motivated by the need to succeed, she seeks a way to finance her advanced degree. Out of hope and options, she follows her best friend Jade into a job as an escort. With a degree in finance, River expected to deal in commodities, but never considered bartering her body for the cash, until now.
On her first assignment, she meets the man of her dreams. A man who has the power to rescue her or destroy her. Jonathan Ferris runs his financial empire by day, and wallows in loneliness by night. River is everything right in the world, but everything wrong for him.
The Dean’s List—taking academic excellence to new levels.

Author Biography

Kelly Collins writes with the intention of keeping the love alive.
Always a romantic, she is inspired by real time events mixed with a dose of fiction. She encourages her readers to reach the happily ever after but bask in the afterglow of the perfectly imperfect love.
Kelly lives in Colorado with her husband of twenty-five years. She loves hockey, shiny objects and has a new-found appreciation for green smoothies.

Author Insight

How far would you go?

The Dean's List was inspired by an article I read in the Huffington Post about college co-eds and escorting. Although hard numbers are difficult to ascertain, polls have indicated that somewhere between nine and twenty-five percent of college students, both men and women, turn to some form of sex trade to finance their education. This book is about one such girl and her journey to find out just how far she'll go.

Book Excerpt

The Dean's List

Hunger gripped my stomach. Food had become a luxury item I couldn’t afford. When I opened the cupboard this morning the shelves were bare except for the box of microwave popcorn and the remnants of Cornflakes strewn across the soiled contact paper.

I’m told that sex sells. Tell that to the cheap bastards who come to The Grind and gawk at the bikini baristas. While I froth their coffees and warm their cinnamon buns, they stare.

I dumped the jar that contained way more quarters than dollars on the table. The change clattered across the worn Formica and plopped onto the pleather bench of my favorite booth. It was here that I tallied my tip totals while the afternoon sunlight slanted in the window.

Today was a bear market day. Forty dollars would hardly pay my weekly transportation costs. How was I supposed to make my rent and eat?

Pride had kept me from asking for help, but I was going to have to call Jade. From the little I’d seen of her lately, she appeared to be weathering the economic downslope better than I. She’d have a plan, she always did. I dropped my head to the table with a thunk, closed my eyes, and silently asked the universe for a solution.